Constitution Day 2010

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Photo, recommended reading, March 18, 2008, neon.mamacita, Flickr
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Every September 17, Constitution Day calls on teachers to memorialize—and critically engage with—Constitutional history in the classroom. But what approach to the Constitution should you take? What quality teaching resources are available? How can you interest your students in a document that is more than 200 years old?

In 2008, Teachinghistory.org published a roundup of Constitution Day resources. Many of those resources remain available, but online Constitution Day content continues to grow. Check out the sites below for materials that recount the Constitutional Convention of 1787, compare the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution, explore U.S. Supreme Court cases that have interpreted the Constitution, and apply the Constitution to contemporary debates.

Online Resources

The Library of Congress's Constitution Day page collects the full text of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Amendments, as well as the Federalist Papers and the Articles of Confederation. Lesson plans for grades 6–12 accompany the documents. The page also includes short suggested reading lists for elementary, middle, and high school, and links to relevant Library of Congress American Memory collections, such as Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention and the papers of James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Also check out the Library's collection of primary sources "Creating the United States."

You can find an elegant, simple presentation of the Constitution on the National Archives' Constitution Day page. Check out their high-resolution PDF of the original document, part of NARA's 100 Milestone Documents exhibit.

If the Constitution is proving a difficult read for your students, try the National Constitution Center's Interactive Constitution. Search the text by keyword or topic, and click on passages that are unclear to find explanatory notes from Linda R. Monk's The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution. The Constitution Center also offers its own Constitution Day page, with a short video on the creation of the Constitution, interactive activities, and quizzes.

If you're not already familiar with EDSITEment, created by the National Endowment for the Humanities, take a look through their extensive collection of lesson plans. A quick search reveals more than 90 lessons related to the Constitution.

Interested in bringing home to students the Constitution's importance today? The New York Times' Constitution Day page links current events to the Constitution in more than 40 lesson plans. The Times also invites students to submit answers to questions such as "Should School Newspapers Be Subject to Prior Review?" and "What Cause Would You Rally Others to Support?"

Can't find anything here that sparks your interest or suits your classroom? Many more organizations and websites offer Constitution Day resources, including the Bill of Rights Institute, the American Historical Association, Annenberg Media, and Consource. (Check out our Lesson Plan Reviews for a review of a lesson plan from Consource on the Preamble to the Constitution.)

Sourcing a Primary Document

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Engraving, "Eureka," 1866, Library of Congress
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This historian think aloud shows a historian reading an edited statement by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) regarding the 1925 Scopes Trial. Specifically, this 73-second video shows a historian considering the source of this document and generating questions, before launching into the document’s contents.

The accompanying audio commentary, Using the Think-Aloud, points out what the historian is doing so viewers can see why her questions and processes are called historical thinking. These two features work together to help viewers visualize thinking processes that are usually implicit and hidden.

American Originals Part II

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Speech notes, John F. Kennedy, Remarks of June 26, 1963
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A presentation of more than 25 "of the most treasured documents in the holdings of the National Archives" with 10 contextual essays of up to 300 words in length. Arranged in chronological sections, corresponding to eras suggested by the National Standards for History, this site provides facsimile reproductions of important documents relating to diplomacy, presidents, judicial cases, exploration, war, and social issues. Includes the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolutionary War (1783); receipts from the Lewis and Clark expedition (1803); the judgment in the Supreme Court's Dred Scott Decision (1857); Robert E. Lee's demand for the surrender of John Brown at Harper's Ferry in 1859; the Treaty of 1868 with the Sioux Indians; an 1873 petition to Congress from the National Woman Suffrage Association for the right of women to vote, signed by Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and a 1940 letter from student Fidel Castro to Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for a ten-dollar bill. Provides links to teaching suggestions for two of the documents. A good site for introducing students to a variety of the forms of documentation accumulated in the collections of the Archives.

Official Documents
Personal Accounts
Political Documents
Post-1865 [9-12]
Images
Text
Colonization & Settlement, 1585-1763
Revolution & New Nation, 1754-1820s
Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930
Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945
Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s
African Americans
American Indians
International Relations
Legal History
Military History
Politics
Southern States
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Women

Stop and Source!

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photography, Jonathan with a ball, c. 1957 digitized 23 May 2010, Flickr CC
Question

I am teaching first grade. As part of the lesson I am going to put photographs of families from the 1900s into an album and ask the students how these families are the same or different than their own families. Any suggestions on how to spice this up?

Answer

Before you place photos in an album and make comparisons, use your pictures to introduce an activity called Stop and Source. Sourcing refers to taking inventory of the creator, date, place, and type of a piece of evidence in order to “read” it more accurately. Sourcing is an essential skill for critical analysis and information literacy. As soon as children have books read aloud to them or look at pictures, they can be introduced to the concept that all texts, written or visual, have a creator and a time when they were made.

  1. Choose pictures for which you have some source information such as the date taken, the photographers’ names or where they were taken, etc. You may wish to use pictures from the late 1800s to make a bigger contrast with today.
  2. Project a long ago picture with an overhead or interactive board and ask your students to describe what they see.
  3. Next, project a picture from today and again ask your students to describe what they see.
  4. Ask your students what is different about the pictures.
  5. Ask your students why these things are different.
  6. Next, share the available source information for the pictures with your class, such as:
    • WHO took the picture?
    • WHEN was the picture taken?
    • WHERE was the picture taken?
  7. After you share the source information for each picture, ask your students if the dates are the same or different, if the places and photographers are the same or different, etc. Could differences in time and place that we find in the source information begin to explain some of the differences in the pictures?
  8. To help your students remember to always look for sourcing information when they read a book or look at a picture, teach them to Stop and Source with a kinetic activity. Ask them to stand up, raise a hand to their shoulder, palm out, then push it forward as they say “Stop and Source!” Do this a few times, then return to your activity.
  9. Project another photo and ask your class what to do first. Hopefully they will say “Stop and Source!”
  10. Repeat the comparison of a pair of pictures from long ago and today.

This activity will help your students begin to develop a sourcing habit, and understand that source information helps us “read” pictures accurately.

Bibliography

Wineburg, S. and D. Martin. "Seeing Thinking on the Web." The History Teacher 41(3) (2008).

For more information

The Bringing History Home project's Source, Observe, Contextualize, Corroborate Visual Image Analysis Guide can help guide your students' sourcing.

Or check out this Ask a Master Teacher by Teachinghistory.org on using scrapbooking in the history classroom.

America on the Move, Part One: Migrations, Immigrations, and How We Got Here

Description

Students and Smithsonian National Museum of American History curators give a tour of the exhibition "America on the Move," which looks at how immigration and migration impacted American history and at the role of various forms of transportation.

To view this electronic field trip, select "America on the Move, Part One: Migrations, Immigrations, and How We Got Here" under the heading "Electronic Field Trips."

Civics Online

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Painting, "Penn's Treaty with the Indians," Edward Hicks, c.1840-1844
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This site was designed as a resource for teachers and students of Civics, grades K-12, in Michigan public schools. The site provides access to 118 primary source documents and links to 71 related sites. Of these documents, 22 are speeches, 34 are photographs or paintings, and five are maps. The site is indexed by subject and "core democratic values" as determined by Michigan Curriculum Framework. A section for teachers includes one syllabi each for primary, middle, and high school courses. The syllabi are accompanied by interviews with the teacher who developed the assignments and by a student who participated in the curriculum, as well as by examples of student work. "Adventures in Civics" presents student visitors with a 178-word essay on Elian Gonzalez and an essay assignment for each grade level on what it means to be an American. The site links to six articles and 17 sites about Gonzalez.

Students may use a multimedia library, simultaneously searchable by era, grade-level, and core democratic value. The site also provides a timeline of American history with 163 entries (five to 500-words). The site provides a 1,000-word explanation of core democratic values and links to 41 other government and university sites about American history and civics. This site will probably be most interesting and useful for teachers looking for curriculum ideas.

Maps
Paintings and Prints
Photographs
Speeches
Teaching Tools
Images
Text
Colonization & Settlement, 1585-1763
Revolution & New Nation, 1754-1820s
Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930
Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945
Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s
Contemporary US, 1968-Present
African Americans
American Indians
Education
Ideas & Ideologies
Immigration
Latinos
Legal History
Midwestern States
Politics
Women

Resources for Flag Day

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Envelope, Elmer Ellsworth with sword, pistol, and flag, c.1861-1865, LoC
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Do you celebrate Flag Day? Though not an official federal holiday, June 14 (one week from today) memorializes the day when the Second Continental Congress approved the first version of what evolved into our modern national flag.

Since 1777, the flag has gained 37 stars and exact specifications for color and design, but it's always been recognizable. Red, white, and blue, it has waved over people, places, and events throughout U.S. history. How much do your students know about the flag and its history? If you ask them to share what they know, do they offer stories about Betsy Ross or the writing of "The Star-Spangled Banner"? Use these stories as starting points or explore other pieces of flag history with free online resources.

On Teachinghistory.org
  • Historian John Buescher describes the history of the flag—and the history of the story of Betsy Ross.
  • Historian Alan Gevinson looks at the design of the Confederate flag and how it differs from the U.S. flag.
  • In Lesson Plan Reviews, we explore the strong points of a Smithsonian Institution lesson on "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the War of 1812.
The Wider Web
  • The Smithsonian National Museum of American History lets you interact online with the flag that inspired the national anthem.
  • The Smithsonian exhibit July 1942: United We Stand looks at ways the image of the flag was used in World War II.
  • You can find more flag-related artifacts on the Smithsonian National Museum of American History's History Explorer.
  • OurStory, another project of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, offers a reading guide for the picture book The Flag Maker, which looks at the flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
  • The Library of Congress suggests questions to ask students about the flag and related primary sources.
  • When Alaska and Hawaii became states, the 48-star flag needed two new stars. The National Archives preserves two possible designs sent to the White House by citizens.
  • Every year, the president proclaims Flag Day. Read recent proclamations at the White House website.
  • EDSITEment offers crosscurricular lessons on the flag as a symbol and other symbols of the U.S.
For more information

Looking for resources for other holidays? How about heritage months? Check out Teachinghistory.org's spotlight pages! Spotlight pages are available all year long and update constantly.

The Early Conservation Movement

Question

Was it successful for everyone?

Textbook Excerpt

Most begin by describing how industrialization marred the environment and wasted natural resources. They then describe how President Theodore Roosevelt secured new laws that gave the federal government power to curb environmental abuses and manage natural resources.

Source Excerpt

Sources show how conservation laws designed to protect wasteful and damaging uses of natural resources created entirely new categories of crime. They redefine traditional “pioneering” activities such as carving farmland out of the public domain, building log cabins, and hunting animals for food as the crimes of squatting, timber theft, and poaching. They also reveal how conserving Yosemite and the Grand Canyon for public enjoyment carried significant costs for Native Americans who called these places home.

Historian Excerpt

Historians describe the conservation movement as significantly more diverse, both geographically and politically, than textbook accounts suggest. They tend to emphasize the movement’s strong ties to the larger Progressive movement, explore conservation’s national scope, and highlight the work of local grassroots leaders. Historians have also emphasized the significant human costs and unintended environmental consequences of key conservation policies.

Abstract

Textbooks celebrate the conservation movement as an unalloyed success: New forestry laws prevented widespread clear-cutting, erosion, and fires. Game preservation laws protected wildlife from overhunting. Reclamation laws reformed the haphazard use of scarce water resources in the American West, enabling agricultural expansion. Preservation laws protected areas of scenic beauty from privatization and tacky commercial development. Yet historians have depicted the conservation movement much more broadly—and have assessed its legacy more critically. Why?

The Civil War in American Memory

Description

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"Gary Gallagher, John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia, discusses the different Civil War narratives that emerged in the popular consciousness in the century after the war. From the 'Lost Cause' rhetoric of the defeated Confederacy, in which an unapologetic South found honor in defeat, to the 'Emancipation Cause' advanced by the Union, which held that the North went to war in order to liberate slaves, Gallagher explains that these narratives drew both on fact and myth and were critical in the formation of regional and national American identity."

The Three Constitutions

Description

In this lecture from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Professor Cornell examines the three distinct phases of the Constitution. "The first is the Constitution in the 18th century as imagined by the Founding Fathers. The Constitution went through another incarnation after the Civil War. Professor Cornell will then look at the Constitution in the decades after the New Deal to the present."

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